Barbell Shrugged - How To Fix Your Lower Back

Episode Date: December 28, 2016

We drop into MovementRX this week to talk all things mobility with Theresa Larson and Anders Varner. We dive into lower back pain and how you can identify and fix the source of the pain in the body. Fact: 8 out of 10 humans (both athletes and couch potatoes alike) have some sort of lower back pain, and most of the time the pain is caused by some sort of imbalance or weakness somewhere else in the body.  Theresa and Anders bring to light some "oh shit" points on how our daily habits can be the cause of our pain. They also debunk some assumptions around mobility, and physical therapy. You can learn more about MovementRX at movement-rx.com and get their free guide on fixing lower back pain at lower back pain here    

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Teresa Larson and Anders Varner and talk about how to fix your Shrug. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson. And we have traveled down to Movement RX, 30 minutes south. It was a treacherous, treacherous. Tough drive. High five. Along the ocean. Yeah.

Time to blow with the five traffic. 60 degrees, 70 degrees. Yeah, here with Teresa Larson, Anders Varner, and we're going to be talking about low back pain today. Yes, we are. Yeah, I don't think we've ever covered this before, which is surprising. Not directly. You'd think we would have had an episode about this by now.

You'd think. We're on episode 200 and something, and we haven't talked about this. And probably half the people listening to this suffer from it at some point, or currently do, or will. Was it everyone will? Probably. Probably well more than half. Eight in ten adults, whether you're a fitness person or a sedentary, will have it. Eight in ten.

Is that normal? No. Unfortunately, it is now. It's eight out of ten people. I feel like that has to be normal. It's common, but not normal. Pain is not normal. That's a good way to put it.

It's common, but not normal. Common, but not normal. It's like peeing yourself. It's common, but not normal. How common is it for you? It isn't. Well, I almost, with the pregnancy now.

Um, no comment. Yeah, it's, it, it happens a lot to women who've had children um,

or have weak pelvic floors and it happens to men too but unfortunately, postpartum, it's a common thing but it's not normal to have happen. I,

I keep hearing about uh, weak pelvic floors. We've talked about that a lot. When you've been here? Yeah, and it's been a subject I've been interested in because I had a few hernias a couple years back

and had to have surgery. When you get cut open, you start paying attention a little bit more. To your pelvic floor? Doug had surgery on his shoulder yes next thing you know he knows everything about shoulders almost yes and then for me i'm like wow i uh my guts were coming out so i should probably pay attention to that your pelvic floor is the other diaphragm so you got one obviously that helps you breathe but the

other pelvic the other diaphragm is your pelvic floor. And we're talking about low back pain today. It can refer pain to the low back. You have a weak pelvic floor, it can cause low back pain. Yeah, so if you would have told me you might want to check out your pelvic floor five years ago, I'd have been like, sure, whatever. Like, what does that mean? How would I even recognize it would be weak or strong? Well, so if you are someone, it depends on your pelvic position.

So if you had inguinal hernias, abdominal hernias, most likely it is. If you had pain in your hip, low back, most likely your pelvic floor is weak. It's never one thing. And like we're going to talk about down the show is the low back is where the pain is, but the cause isn't there. The cause is somewhere else. It's above or below. And what's below the low back? Your pelvic floor, your hips.

Kind of like tie a dumbbell to my pelvic floor and do something with it. Well, no, no, no. So you have to think like, okay, if you can tell your pelvic floor is weak, if you're someone who constantly is in an extended state, if you're someone who likes to stick their butt out a lot. It used to be me. Yeah? Did you wear high heels too? Yeah, mostly when I was, it was like when my arm was hanging off the pole, so the shoulder was here and then that was out there.

I was actually taught to hyperextend when I first learned to back squat. And so was I. Well, I mean, I was spending hours a day in weightlifting shoes trying to get that back extension. Well, everyone right now, try to just extend your low back and now try to do a kegel.

So, a kegel. Like lift up your jump towards your heart. Yeah, that's not easy. Try to do it. Right now, everybody watching the show and now go ahead. T tuck your pelvis a little bit, squeeze your butt, and now draw your goods up towards your heart. Super easy. A little bit easier.

Everything's moving. So the thing is, if you are sitting, though, for long periods of time, right, in an extended position or flexed position, that pelvic floor musculature turns off. I want to rewind just for a second. What's a Kegel? So, good. Actually, can we rewind even further and you can tell us who the hell you are? Yes.

We kind of skipped over. All the credibility builders that you're a physical therapist and you run this cool practice that me and Mike are both patients of. Oh, yeah. Like you treat me and Mike. You're our therapist. Keep keeping us healthy. What the hell, Doug?

You're supposed to cut me off way earlier. You can tell how much I love Doug about the pelvis. Anyway, that's another story. I am Dr. Teresa Larson. I'm a doctor of physical therapy and CrossFit coach, strength coach. And I started MovementRx four years ago, which is where we're at now. It used to not be a brick-and-mortar shop. It was a mobile practice.

So I would run around to different CrossFit gyms and treat, build the culture, build the recognition. And then finally we had enough money to have this brick-and-mortar shop, which is really awesome. And that's me. I thought it was really cool when I moved out here that I was, you know, I'm always banged up

in one way or another especially from doing mixed martial arts and jujitsu. I'm always hurt somewhere. CrossFit and weightlifting stuff kind of actually keeps me healthier

than doing jujitsu in a lot of ways. But having a therapist, a physical therapist who understands the CrossFit world and the performance world is not always the easiest thing to find.

It's a little easier in SoCal than it is in other parts of the world. When I lived in Memphis, it was hard to find somebody that really understood all the things that I was going to do on a weekly basis. And that wasn't in conflict even with the things I was going to do. A lot of people you go to, you go to a doctor, you go to other physical therapists, and i don't even i don't even want to treat you because they they know they're gonna they know they they feel like they're gonna treat you and then you're gonna go back and hurt yourself again and then they're gonna then you're gonna try and treat you again and then someone's gonna you're never gonna get better because you're doing this other thing that's hurting you all the time and then someone's gonna say who's your physical therapist you're gonna say oh teresa my physical

therapist and i never get any better so she must not be very good yeah and they like they like don't even want to treat you so it's hard to find a a good physical therapist that does CrossFit or weightlifting or powerlifting or something in our little world on their own that really understands the needs of our particular sport. So that's why I started MovementRx. I think MovementRx is actually built off of some pain myself, not physical pain, but just like I am so done with the physical therapy world, traditional world. Like I worked in a clinic after getting my doctorate for six months, a sports performance clinic, and I had 15 minutes a patient. It's all three patients an hour every day. And I didn't get to

treat them the way I wanted to treat them. And I am a lifter. I do Spartan races. I love to be athletic. Um, I was in the Marinean races. I love to be athletic. I was in the Marine Corps. Like, I love working with veterans and wounded warriors. And I had no time to actually spend helping people heal the way they should heal. It actually took me 16 to 20 visits to get someone better versus now it's like 3.3 visits to get them discharged with basic injuries. And so I started Movement Racks because I just, I wanted to treat people the way they deserve to be treated,

and I wanted to treat people like myself who are active. I didn't say I loved doing jiu-jitsu when I did it, but I loved doing CrossFit, I loved doing Spartan races, and I want to help, I want to figure it out with people. Like, I don't, you know, with you, Doug, we've worked on a number of things, and I don't want to just be like, I don't know what's going on with you and let you go. Like, I want to figure it out with people. Like I don't, you know, with you, Doug, we've worked on a number of things. And I don't want to just be like, I don't know what's going on with you and let you go. Like I want to figure it out.

And if I don't know how to figure it out, I'm going to find someone to figure it out. That's been really key for me, by the way, because I've gone to dozens of people for my shoulder to get back full mobility after I had a surgery in 2008. And most people say, I can help you. No problem. And then six weeks later, they go, I don't really know what's wrong with you. I'm sorry. And then I go to someone I can help you. No problem. And then six weeks later they go, I don't really know what's wrong with you. I'm sorry. And then I go to someone else and in the pattern repeats itself. And so, um, I guess I'm a unique case in a lot of ways. And we've been working together for a while and, and you, even though we haven't made a lot of

progress mobility wise on my shoulder, it doesn't hurt, which is good. Um, but you know, we've, we've, we've continued to kind of stay together to try to like find someone else that can, that can help us or whether maybe I need another surgery someday. Like, we can kind of work together as a team to find, you know, a orthopedic surgeon or someone who might be able to help us out if, you know, in the gym in a setting like this, you know, therapy-wise just isn't going to cut it. Right. In some cases, so there's's no it's like the marine quarry no woman or man left behind like it's a basic freaking concept but it doesn't happen because the medical world people get caught up in seeing so many patients you lose track

and all of our pts here we don't we're not overwhelmed with vol i mean we have our own patients we work with and we're busy but we're not so busy we can't track who we're working with and keep in touch. And like your well-being, you're, you know, treating your shoulder is probably not going to just be PT based. We're going to have to work other approaches, perhaps PRP, perhaps surgery in the end. But right now, no, we're going to continue down a neural track. It seems like that's like the culture in the medical community as a whole is there's a lot of volume, a lot of quantity over quality because they need to make money. I think, yeah, there's, there's a lot of reasons for that. Yeah. And money is driving a lot of that. And I'm

interested to see how, uh, I see a lot of people now demanding the quality and are willing to go, you know, they're now, everyone's kind of questioning, you know, what, what's the system we built that, uh, that we're now looking at quantity and not quality and now nobody's getting quality service. So, uh, it's nice to be interacting. And when I'm searching for someone to help me out, it's someone I'm looking for quality, not a deal. Right. Yeah. And, um, so the quality, so for our practice, we do cash pay mostly, and we do take insurance, PPO insurance. But like for you, from treating you, it's, you had a very, you worked with a bunch of therapists,

but what we focus on the most is breath work. Right. Right, which isn't really, that's something you have to slow down, take time to teach, and that's like the biggest thing that helped you that's a huge process too yeah that's something that doesn't really click with people right off the bat and then they find it and they find that all that muscle tension gets released and all of a sudden there's this like moment where it just happens there's an aha moment it's like hey breathing works this is weird it opens up joints yeah it takes the tension out of muscles

it seems to be kind of a an emerging topic in a way where not that like knowing how to breathe is a new thing but doing it correctly it seems to be like coming into the industry where a lot of people are really focusing on on doing it correctly which is when you first hear that you're like wow how would you do it wrong like i'm gonna breathe my whole life and so it's really interesting voluntary yeah like it's it's really interesting. Involuntary. Yeah, like, it's coming into the industry in a really big way. So I want to talk about that as well. But actually, go ahead, Anders.

Give us your background as well since we haven't gotten to you yet. 12 minutes in. Hi, Anders. Good to see you. My name is Anders Varner. I've been a strength coach for the last seven years. Found a weight room when I was 13. Competed at crossfit regional four times um the barbell has been pretty cool to me um your long time gym owner long time gym owner

just sold the gym and one of the biggest reasons was i uh we started i was working with theresa she was doing some work with me as well it's like you're the guru for everybody that's dinged up around here but when I was coaching I've started to realize like I owning a CrossFit gym we have 20 something people we need to get through a workout in an hour and everyone wants to feel the CrossFit thing at the end and get work on their fitness what happens when somebody comes with a dinged up shoulder or dinged up back something's tight what is it and the very first answer is oh let's lighten the weight so you can get through this workout and i really just started a question like why is lighten the weight the answer like we're not really fixing movement patterns we're not really helping this person get better we're just

getting them through a workout and through my personal training clients through some injuries that i was having i started to realize like we need to start connecting movement, brain and body, the breath, mobility, stability. Like you can't really just take this workout and make it in a rehab setting or get people healthy. That's like a performance piece. And we need to be focusing on rehabilitation, getting people healthy, and then focusing on performance. Through a couple injuries of my own, working with Teresa, we started to have the same conversation with each other on how we can treat people better. How can we take a group workout and kind of change postures or change the movement mechanics a little bit? And this whole thing kind of took off. The scaling for pain is an interesting topic. And that a lot of times when people

consider scaling, it's how can we lighten the load even if it's a body weight movement how can we strap a band to you yeah to make it easier um and i kind of like that perspective which is if we're going to scale for pain we need to be looking at the quality of the movement and we probably need to either change or avoid that movement for the time being until something's corrected and it's so easy for coaches to get wrapped up into getting people through workouts versus helping people in their daily lives because the workout is what they come to pay you for. And that's what they're at the gym for is to get a workout in.

But we need to, as coaches, have the depth of knowledge to understand like, hey, there's ways to help this person and there's ways to not. If we're doing back squats and someone's got a low back problem, probably putting a compression load on the top of their spine

and having them sit down. Like, I don't know if you guys, clearly back in the day when bodybuilding.com was a thing, all these were called compound movements. And then the CrossFit world showed up and they changed the word to functional movements. And all of a sudden it was like, we have to be able to back squat to be able to get through life.

It's like, no, you need to have the functional movement of squatting. But back squats are an exercise. And those two don't exactly correlate together like we have to be able to squat we don't have to be able to back squat there's a lot of ways to practice functional movement that is not exercise based and building on that theory of just how do we get people doing the functional movement better without endangering them or putting their body in a worse position yeah if that person did goblet squats and lunges they wouldn't lose the functionality in their day-to-day life exactly like of course if they are a power lifter they need to back squat at some point but you you want to be able to fix their low back in some fashion while while doing that you got to keep them strong in a variety of

other ways usually when somebody's a power lifter, I mean, there's going to be a ton of crazy heavy loads that these people are moving around, but they've gotten into the performance world and they should be healthy by that time. We're talking about a kind of general population people. Your average Joe that walks into the gym that's sitting 8 to 10 hours a day,

sitting in traffic, whatever it is, they're dealing with stress at work, and then they come into the gym and it's like let's pr your back squat we need to have a better protocol to getting people healthy understanding what their lifestyle is and what they should be getting out of the gym um more than hey let's go squat 400 pounds that's an interesting concept overall is uh i find most athletes are sedentary most of the time yeah and then push it to the limit for one hour and then you go back to being sedentary that's very sedentary too like i mean if you work from home which we do a lot of writing we're doing

a lot of video editing and things of that nature and all of a sudden you look down it's like i got this sweet little fitbit that tells me i've gone 600 steps and it's three o'clock in the afternoon. You're like, I've literally haven't left this room all day long. And now I'm going to go to the gym and try and snatch. No, my arm hasn't even gone over my head. I've been stuck in this typing position all day. Like I, there's no reason to go and kill myself. We need to be working on the functional movements and understanding how to push, pull, hand squat, carry things. Do you guys have any any little tips for for anyone that there's probably a large section of the population for anyone that has a desk job or they they are on the computer all day they are sitting all day it's just it's just a reality of life in a lot of ways like if

you if you're at work you're probably on a computer all day everybody is so what do you what do you do to get around the fact that being sedentary is, is almost a requirement of your life? So there's this concept called the Pomodoro effect. Um, it's yeah, that, that does sound, that does sound important. Yes. So it's every 25 minutes you get up and move for five minutes. You just don't. So whether you stand a lot during the day, if I'm standing in this position for 25 minutes, I need to have, you know, a alarm on my phone or a reminder somehow, then I move for five minutes versus just standing here all day. Standing's great, but like, it's still sedentary in a standing position. Right. That's a really interesting point that a lot of people don't realize, I think, is that it's not necessarily sitting that's bad for you.

It's maintaining a static position for a long period of time. That really is the problem. Yes. So going back to the gym concept too, all the sedentariness you have during the day isn't going to, so that one hour in the gym isn't going to reverse the effects of that 10 to 13 hours in a sedentary position. I hate to say it. Dustbound talks about it.

Kelly Starrett talks about it. But yes, the Pomodoro effect is probably the easiest concept to apply. 25 minutes of moving, working. When you're working, I mean, I'm going to add a layer to this, like maintain a neutral spinal position. So even me standing here, I'm conscious of my pelvic position, rib cage versus hanging out. Do people do that?

Or doing the gangster lean at work, which is okay sometimes. Depends who you're trying to impress. Yeah, exactly. I do that in the car, like office space. But then five minutes you move. So you do some squats, you go maybe do some stretches if you want to,

go to the bathroom, all those things that are important to do in that five minutes break. I mean, but it also helps your concentration. Yeah, I was going to say mental clarity. It's got to help with that. So we're not, I mean, we're talking about the body here, but that mental clarity, your energy you put into tasks, like you're going to be more efficient with that task if you give yourself breaks.

Yeah, I feel like too, if you don't like your job, it's a nice little like a series of short sprints to get through your day. You're like, all right, just 25 more minutes to work. And then I get to get up and walk around and move around. You have to go on a walk in the middle of the day. I'll be gone for an hour. Dr. Teresa said so. I have to go.

Right. It's the new smoke break. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or something else. Then you go to the bathroom break, drink water break. Exactly. Yeah. Or something else. You go to the bathroom break, drink water break. I remember when I went through boot camp

for... Just think about going up to the smoke area, light a cigarette, start doing some squats. I heard that was good for your Kegels, too. It's good for your pelvic floor. Now you can smoke some weed, I guess. You suck on this kegels.

In California, you can work on your diaphragm breathing. Yeah, if you take a bong rip and then do squats, it's super good for the whole system. It helps you relax.

And yeah, it helps you relax. It really helps you get up. You really have to get through the work day. Which is really important to being able to be efficient. When you're tense

doing your work, like that's not it's not good for your body over time like five percent more attention leads to actually more pain in the body too over time like just holding on to more attention in your body from stress from whether you're working at a desk standing or sitting like just five percent more tension than normal causes can bad up over time and a lot of that is just creating awareness to the number. Even we do this for a living and talk to people about this and then all of a sudden

you're sitting at the computer and your shoulders are in your ears and everything's tight and your back tightens up and then you go to walk away. Your breath is just right here. Why am I panting like a dog? And then all of a sudden it's like, can I just chill out and take a deep breath? This computer's not in a fight with me right now um but the awareness of hey it's been 15 minutes it's been 20 minutes

it's been 30 minutes i need to get up and move somewhere yeah um yeah it's just about creating that connection to your body of things are tight why are my shoulders up why is everything so tense right now so real quick if you guys want a quick drill to do when you get up and stand, so you can squat, of course, but, you know, we, in the therapy world, there's this thing called spinal dissociation. We're sitting, we're in this position for a long time, and we're in spinal neutral, and that's great and all, but then our spine needs to rotate and move.

There's a lot of joints in our spine. I think there's like 72 joints or more. I probably have to look that up again, but it's something, it's a lot of joints in our spine. I think there's like 72 joints or more. I probably have to look that up again, but it's a large number. Some troll is going to come after you now. Yeah. Some geek is going to say, there's a lot of joints. Edit that part out. Edit the number out.

Yeah. It's okay. A lot. Just beep it. What's important is that, so just stand with your feet together and bend over and touch your toes 20 times. Rounding your back is okay. Like, you want your back to round.

And maybe think about, like, when you bend over, you could roll down, starting with your neck, all the way down. Like, think about one vertebrae at a time. Like a body weight. Yeah, like a Jefferson curl.

So you think about one segment at a time, working each segment, and then rolling back up, rolling back down. Do that 20 times. It feels very nice on the spine. It's boring, though. How do I make that interesting? You could put on a disco ball, and then close your eyes doing it. Stand on your chair,

and you're going to get some extra range of motion at the end. Music. Four foot above your cue. Do it to the music. So you brought up an important point. Your back is supposed to be able to round. You need to have full flexion and full extension. You don't want to hang out in those positions all day or do them under load. But that's a healthy, normal thing for your back to be able to do.

So the fact that we're going to this full rounded over position, we're not probably going to hurt ourselves in that position. But if we did it, of course, with a barbell on our back and we did to build up to do is do a Jefferson curl at body weight with your body weight. And I'm like that's not where I'm at right now. But you don't just start off doing that. You start off no weight. You build up that over time because we're actually working on – Do not do that.

Do not load up on your body weight. He's talking five pounds a week starting with nothing. But you're working on the connective tissue. So the fact that you're bending over, rounding, and rolling back up and down 20 times in your break every 25 minutes, that's we're getting more flexion in your spine. And sometimes one of the biggest problems I see in the clinic is people have really flat low backs. They don't bend. They get their rounding from their thoracic,

and they have really flat upper thoracic, which is why they have neck pain. The caveat to that, the opposite to that is extension. We need to be able to extend, too, from our thoracic spine, even our low back and our pelvis, but oftentimes most of the extension comes from the low back. So just practicing proper extension in the low back or in the spine where you get, you know, you start with the pelvis, you get into the low back, then you get into the thoracic spine and then into the neck is very therapeutic. You can do it to music, slow jams, whatever. Slow jams. Casey and Jojo. Do it nice and slow.

You're not going to want to do it to like Metallica because they'll just do it too fast. And what happens when you do two things too fast your body learns to compensate where does it compensate usually in the low back so you know pomodoro break pomodoro all right actually come back we're gonna talk about kegels i'll say what i was gonna say when we come back then okay perfect everybody's talking i'm talking talking about your ears. Talking about glute training. Talking about glute training. Booty or butt. If it's a girl, it's booty.

If it's a guy, it's just your butt. It's your butt. And welcome back. Is that the real start of the show? Yeah. I am fairly confident that the last time we did Technique WOD, you were wearing that shirt and I was wearing this shirt. Oh, yeah?

I think that was the Nuggets of Pearls. No, it was both. Yep. I just don't wear very many shirts these days. It's because I lose all my shirts. Every time I watch the show or Technique WOD, I go, where's that shirt? I used to love that shirt, and I lost it somewhere. We travel too much. I got got 100 but i only like five

i'm the same way i only wear like six shirts i only wear shirts lately that have a lot of color i want like a bright red or a green or a blue and all the ones that are gray or black i just don't like them anymore i still wear black if it's got gold on it. Only if it's bedazzled? You need some bling on your shirt? Alright, today we are going to be talking about glute training and specifically glute activation. If you watched episode 170... Uh, nine. Nine! 179! We talked about, what's the title of the show? You love saying it. Man, I don't remember. It's How to Add Mass to That Ass. That's right. That's the most gangster title we've ever had for a show.

Probably the most gangster title we'll ever have ever. That's right. Or rapper-like. So if you're watching the show, we talked a lot about the different types of movements that you could do to help you grow a bigger a bigger butt basically to make you a better athlete since your glute max your big butt muscle is probably the not probably it is the biggest muscle in your body if it's not definitely should be maximus that's why it's called maximus maximum size so it's supposed to be a really big muscle and if you got flat pancake ass and it's not the biggest muscle in your body that's a problem.

That's a big problem. Nobody got time for that. So if if that's your problem then you need to fix that problem because you know not having not having a nice ass you know obviously aesthetically isn't that great nobody wants that but but also you know athletically athletically you know if your glutes aren't firing and you're super quad dominant then you're you're way more likely to have have knee pain you're way more likely to have low back pain and you're just simply not going to be as strong powerful fast as you could be otherwise so whether you're a CrossFit athlete, weightlifter, or you're just playing, you know, a regular kind of high school or

college sport, like you're a soccer player or a basketball player or field sport athlete, you're just not going to run and jump, you know, as well and be as fast as you would if you had, you know, big, strong glute muscles. So refer to that episode for the details on programming, movement selection, and what you do to make that muscle bigger and stronger. Today we're going to talk about activation exercises, which are exercises that you're probably going to do mostly during your warm-up or before you start your strength work to help you recruit your glutes during your training. That way you're more likely to fire those muscles and

to use them during heavy squats, heavy deadlifts and whatnot. That way you don't compensate and go back to using the other muscles that are already strong like your quads and your adductors, which is kind of your groin or your inner thigh muscles. So what we're going to talk about first in this episode is glute max and then we're going to talk about first in this episode is glute max and then we're going to talk about your glute medius which is kind of the muscle here on your side in a totally separate episode. So glute max and just glutes in general they tend to do a couple things. They tend to extend your hip so they take your foot from out in front of you and they pull your leg back and I'm squeezing my glute right now to get my foot behind me so

you can see like if I'm running you know I'm using my glutes to do that terminal hip extension, the very last piece of hip extension. You know, if I'm doing a heavy deadlift, I tend to finish my deadlift using my glutes. Same with a heavy squat, you know, heavy front squat or heavy back squat. The end of the range of motion where my hip is going into full extension, my glutes have a very big role in that case. A lot of people that can't fire their glutes very well, you know, they might get to here and they might not be able to finish

this last bit of hip extension. And then a lot of times they'll hyperextend their back or they'll push their knees forward and they'll kind of lean like this or they'll kind of ramp it up with their thighs in order to kind of skip using their glutes. That's called synergistic dominance in a lot of cases where a muscle that's not your prime mover which should be your glutes

in this case a different muscle will kind of kick in and try to take over for the muscle that's not working and then that's how you get a lot of times how you pull a muscle that's how a lot of times you'll pull a hamstring or like you'll pull your groin because those muscles are firing really hard when another muscle is supposed to be helping the other muscle is not helping and so you strain uh the synergist that's trying to do all the work yeah so hip extension is a big piece remember the other ones hip external rotation and uh extension and abduction so that that's that's the function of that muscle. Every muscle works in three dimensions and three different planes. So extension, external rotation where my knee is moving to the outside and abduction where my leg's going away from me. Terminal hip extension for

squats and whatnot, you tend to think about just extension extension but if you think about that muscle not working if my glutes and or my glute medius since they have similar roles if it's not pulling me into external rotation then then i fall into internal rotation so if my knees dive together in a lot of cases that means my glutes aren't doing their job and they're not working so if that's you and your knees are diving together then you probably need to do some amount of glute activation and or glute medius activation to train those muscles to kick in and pull your knee back out or rather keep your knee excuse me from diving in the other ones like I said if you're a person that for whatever reason, you have a hard time with your hips back. You tend to want to push your knees forward and get that vertical torso. If you're better with a vertical torso, that means

you're better using your quads than you are using your hips. If you squat more than you deadlift, then you probably have a lot stronger legs, stronger quads than you do using your hips. If you squat more than you deadlift, then you probably have a lot stronger legs, stronger quads than you do stronger hips. That's not an infallible statement. There's some distinctions in there, but for the most part, if that's you, and you tend to always go down and then you have to go like this to stand up,

instead of keeping that vertical shin and being able to contract my glutes all the way up, then you're not using your glutes and you're kind of relying on your quads to get up. So if that's you, watch episode 179. Nine? 179. And we can talk about all the movements that you can do to help make that muscle stronger. Today, we're going to talk about activation drills to get those muscles to kick in.

The first one, in fact, I'm not going to use that stuff off the bat. The first one, if Mike stays right there, facing that way, is just to stand up nice and tall, go ahead and put your heels together, and toes apart just a little bit, that way you're slightly externally rotated. Then all Mike's going to do is just squeeze his glutes together, just squeeze your butt together, pinch the dollar bill, I'm glad you're grabbing bills. Get like a five second contraction and then kind of chill, relax. And you're going to do reps just like that.

So you can squeeze for four or five seconds. Hey, do you have, is your headphones playing some music right now? Could be. Not playing music. That's learning material. When I slap my chest, I must turn it on. That's funny. Back to it.

All right, so we're doing reps where Mike's squeezing his glutes and then relaxing. So all he's doing right now is just getting that muscle, or those muscles muscles rather used to contracting. That way they're minorly potentiated when he goes to do a heavier movement. So that's probably the most basic easy way if you're a person that you just never feel your glutes working than doing just kind of a standing glute squeeze that you can easily see Mike doing right now. You don't have to tell anyone you're doing this by the way, you can just do it in secret if this bothers you. Mike doesn't bother Mike at all, he's twerking. That's probably the easiest way. If you want kind of a level two movement,

in that case Mike wasn't really moving at the hip joint, he wasn't flexing, extending his hips, so he wasn't using his glutes to pull his hip through a range of motion he was just standing there just getting that contraction at end range so that's kind of level one doing something like a glute bridge just with body weight if mike lays on the ground and bends his knees what i like to do is pull my toes up off the ground that way i know that i'm pressing through my heels if you're pressing through your heels it's easier to get a good glute contraction. He's keeping his ribs down, he's getting a full hip extension, he's squeezing his glutes and holding that position for a second and then he's

going to go back down and do it again. He's going to do reps just like this. Again for the last one if he was getting kind of a five second contraction he probably could do sets of five reps per set. Same thing here, you're not working out, you're not going to fatigue, you're not training to do anything except to get that muscle to contract where you can feel it. That way when you start to do your heavy strength work,

again, that muscle has had some good strong contractions, but it's not tired. You're not trying to fatigue it in this case, you're trying to just kind of wake it up is an easy way to think about it. Alright, so that's good for the glute bridges. Actually, one more thing. If you're a little more advanced, we could do that on one leg.

So you could pull one knee up. That's one variation as well. So you could start there. Just contract the glute on the other side. If you want to pull his knee all the way up, you could do that as well. Go ahead and pull your knee all the way to your chest. There you go. He could do it like that as well. I like this as opposed to the other one in some cases because I like to get that psoas on the other side. Your psoas is one of your hip flexors that kind of runs from here to here and when that muscle is firing all the way,

which it becomes inactive in a lot of people as well, it pulls his glutes, rather pulls his pelvis all the way into a posterior tilt and he can get that full glute contraction with his pelvis posteriorly tilted, which means kind of rolled back like this, which is what you're looking for when you're getting a good glute contraction yeah so as an example if you're a sprinter which actually that leads us in the next activation drill go and come over here you want us on this wall is that good sure yeah how's your ass feel mike uh ass tastic ass tastic all right so uh you saw in the last example the knee was up while one knee was up while he was getting a glute contraction on the opposite side.

This sprinter wall drill is one of my favorite out of all glute activation exercises where Mike's going to put his hands against the wall and he's going to lean forward just a little bit. It's going to make his body nice and straight. One knee's going to come up as high as he can get it and the other leg's going to be on his toe with his heel up just like that. So you can see here, Mike's getting a strong glute contraction on this side he has a relatively neutral spine he's getting this knee up as high as possible which is getting a good psoas activation

on the other side and this is a good position if you see mike tilted forward a little more if he was going to be accelerating into a sprint he would be in a very similar position where one leg is driving into the ground while one while the other side opposite knee is is aggressively thrusting forward and then of course he's going to switch switch switch as he accelerates into that sprint so he could hold this position and then he could switch after five seconds you know and do you know four maybe five um five second holds per leg and that's going to put him in a really good spot with you know both glutes activated ready to go on to soon some heavier strength movements so one thing on this that that's really hard to see on yourself is I want to

start just like this where I'm nice and straight my my head all the way down to toe my whole body is nice and straight and I want to pick up one knee just like this okay without rounding at all well you'll see with a lot of people who have trouble with this movement or with this exercise is that they'll either bend the bottom knee and or round their back. They'll go like this to try to get this knee higher. They'll round their back to pick the knee up, kind of like that. And those same people, they do that when they sprint, and they're not very fast. So you want to be here, body nice and straight,

and then without really moving much, you just pick that knee up, and then you'll automatically feel the downside leg glute contract. Come back down, you're on your toes again, and then same thing. So my body doesn't really move much, but you can see right here, if you look at my glute,

I'm kind of soft here. And then automatically, when I pick this leg up, that downside glute gets a really solid contraction. All right. So that's probably my favorite out of all of them. If you've never tried that, it's an awesome exercise. All right, last one. Again, whenever you're talking about glute activation exercises, generally you're talking about the end of the range of motion so we're gonna do a banded pull through so Mike's gonna walk forward you're gonna have to

lean into this a little bit because the band is gonna be trying to pull you back hands between the leg and he's basically gonna be doing an RDL except this type of RDL makes the end of the movement probably harder than the down part of the movement, which is the opposite if you were using a barbell. So you can see from the side, if you come over to the side, you know, Mike's contracting really hard to keep this position here, where he's activating his glutes, squeezing his glutes, and low back is nice and neutral, legs are straight, and then he can do reps just like that.

There you go, beautiful. You're trying to keep a neutral low back, a nice flat back the entire time, getting a full glute squeeze at the top, and you should feel in this case, you know, a little bit of a pump, like you can feel your glutes working, you can feel, you know, them kind of uncramping as they kind of uncontract is one way to say it or as they actively lengthen it's probably a better way to say it you should feel a little bit of a pump again i did the pump he feels the pump so again if this is an activation drill then he's not going to failure he's not trying to get tired necessarily he's just trying to get his glutes to to contract forcefully so he can feel them. That way they're a little bit potentiated.

When he goes to do heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, Olympic lifts or what have you, he's more likely to get a strong glute contraction during those lifts compared to if he didn't do any activation exercises otherwise. The only little thing that we'll throw in here right at the end is your glutes. Again, I'm going from here to here trying to get terminal hip extension, which means on the front hip flexor wise I have to have enough range of motion there. If I have tight hip flexors then I won't be able to get all the way to here because this isn't mobile enough to get all the way through to a full hip extended position. So you need to work on

your through to a full hip extended position. So you need to work on your, kind of the front of your hip flexor range of motion and mobility. Quick stretches on that, if we do like a world's greatest stretch, just like a big lunge, pushing your hip towards the ground. There you go, perfect. So good enough, you can see on this side, on the right side here, Mike's putting his right hip into full extension. If you wanted to use a band, if you wanted to use a band actually, let me pop this up a little bit. If you wanted to use a band, he could step into the band on his down leg, you're going to be facing it. Go ahead and flip around. So the band is going to go around the leg that's back, knee on the ground. Again, he's going to contract his glute on his down leg and push his hip forward.

That way you're making sure that you have enough range of motion to where you can get a full glute contraction. If you don't have that much range of motion, it doesn't matter how strong your glutes are, you just don't have the range of motion to do it correctly. So you've got to make sure you have both. You've got to have the mobility and the strength to do the movements that we're talking about perfectly. Cool. Now you want to retest your twerk, Mike? Let's see.

Oh, yeah. Wait. Man, that's better than your pec bounce. I think I need a little more time into that one. I mean, I thought the chicks were going to be in the pecs, and then I discovered the ass is the way to go. You're saying the chicks like the ass? Yeah, more than the pecs.

It's much easier to impress them with that. Fewer guys can do it. If you wanted to take this a step further, you could pick up your back leg, reach around and grab it, kind of like you're doing a couch stretch, which is much, much harder. There you go, just like that. Beautiful.

Alright, so that's one more variation for getting enough range of motion for hip flexion. In that case, it's hip flexion with a bent knee, so you're kind of tying the whole front of your thigh into the mix too. You know, there's muscles we could mention there, but really it's not just one know one or two muscles, not just your rectus femoris, your sartorius or whatever, it's everything that's in front of your thigh. Not just muscles, you know nerves, blood vessels, skin, soft tissue, fascia, it's all in there so you need to focus on getting into the right position by doing those types of stretches and don't really worry about which muscles you're stretching. We miss

anything? No, I think we're good. I don't think we did. All right. If you haven't watched episode 179, again, that episode is all about glute training. It's an awesome episode with a fantastic name, if I don't say so myself. You don't have to.

So if you haven't watched that yet, definitely go check out that episode. If you wanna see more episodes like this, then definitely go to barbellshrug.com. Click on the Technique WOD tab. All of our Technique WODs are in the blog there. And then also, if you want to check out our Muscle Gain e-book, you can go to muscle.barbellshrug.com. It's a free e-book. It doesn't cost you anything.

You can download it there. We'll see you another day. Join the conversation every week after the episode over at barbellshrugged.com. This is also where you'll find new episodes of Barbell Shrugged, Technique WOD, Nuggets and Pearls, Barbell Business, Get Change, plus new articles every day on our daily blog written by us, guests of the show, and some of the biggest names in strength and conditioning. So go there and leave a comment now. Oh my gosh, wow, that's so cool. Yay, that's so awesome. Did you like this video? If so, subscribe to our channel and share this with your friends.

And if you want even more free, awesome resources to help you reach your fitness goals, plus some updates that we only share over email, head over to barbell shrug.com and sign up for the newsletter and we're back with uh treese larson and uh and his varner varner varner well doug doug had a question i want to hear about kegels but i actually don't remember what i was going to say but but i but i can start talking if you'd like me to um so the the concept of compensation um can you dive into that a little bit? Like how does that work? How does compensation lead to low back pain? That's a good question. Well, so our body, movement patterns are designed in the brain.

Pain comes from the brain. Like our brain pretty much is like the major computer. Um, and so anytime, so I, the best way to describe compensation is, so let's say we're doing a workout fast and we feel a little bit of like, we're stronger on one side versus the other. Naturally we're asymmetrical beings. Let's just face it. No matter how much you work towards the symmetry, you're always going to be asymmetrical because you're always going to bias one side. A lot of us bias the right. So oftentimes because the pelvic position, our right glutes week left is a little bit left will be stronger,

more, more common than not. Right. You might not fit into that. Oh, well, but when you start adding speed to a workout, right,

you're not, your concentration is focusing on getting that workout done or that movement done. So what are you going to buy? You're going to bias naturally your stronger side. You're going to go with your strength to get through that fight or flight state, that workout done or that movement done. So what are you going to buy? You're going to bias naturally your stronger side. You're going to go with your strength to get through that fight or flight state, that workout. If I'm going through bootcamp or training, I am going to go with my strengths. If my right arm is stronger and can hold up a boat or a log longer than my other arm, and that means I'm going to pass, then I will, then my body will naturally go there. My brain will tell my body, use your right arm.

So, but that means that now the other side of my body is not going to be working as efficiently. It's not going to get as much load, much input. And so now I'm going to, I'm building up the right side of my body when I lift fast because my right side is the dominating side. And then that creates movement pattern faults. So your body starts to compensate with most movements after a while. And that leads to pain. If you're 22, you probably don't notice this yet. So pain isn't, right, right, right.

So let's just say. You're just eating barbells all day long. So let's just say. I don't even notice. With compensation leading to pain... Totally symmetrical. So if your right side... That's an easy way to explain this.

So if you're squatting and your right glute is weaker and your left side is stronger and you biased your left side. Let's just say that. So when I squat, I shift a little bit to my left, but it's pretty subtle. Maybe as I get heavier, it gets a little bit less subtle. But when I do rotate or shift my hips, I'm also getting pelvic rotation slightly to my right.

I might even, to stay forward, my thoracic or lower back is going to have to stay forward. So I'm getting rotation left. There's a twisting going on. And so over time, like that might not hurt someone right away when they're 22, 23, 24, 25, but over time that, that there's going to be stress wear and tear on the discs, on the joints itself, um, on the ligaments. And over time that's going to cause problems. And the brain is going to perceive there's going to be one day where you max a lift or maybe even do something super small like lift up a pillow,

go and squat and lift up a pillow that's three ounces, and you're going to blow out your back. And you're going to blame that freaking pillow. And it's not the pillow's problem. It's the fact that for years and years, you've always biased this one side, and you're getting this shearing force twisting shearing on the low back on maybe certain discs like l4 l5 l5 swaddle which is common areas to injure it's the very very bottom bottom very very bottom of your back um kind of that hinge

position too because it's a transition area between the low back and the sacrum, your pelvis. And so now the disc is herniated, bulging, weaker, and you wonder why that pillow caused it, but it's the compensation pattern over time. The fact that your body naturally goes towards your strength, but that strength causes you to twist abnormal twisting, sharing in the low back and other, even in your knee, right? If you're biasing your left side, most likely your right knee and your right hip are going to be affected because when you squat, you're squatting with load on your back or load on the front or picking something up and both legs have to work,

but the right side isn't getting as much as equal input. Yeah, so like when the athlete hurts their back and they go, oh, Oh coach hurt my back. How do I stretch it? Right. That's, that's like, that's the intuitive thing that an athlete says.

And then the coach goes, well, uh, probably don't need to do that. But when I do it, it feels better. Right. It feels better,

but this might not be what they need. Right. Depends on, that's the thing. It depends on the athletes. Like to stretch your low back. What does it even mean? Right? Like you, you, you stretching your low back or where the pain is, isn't, isn't where you need to be focusing on the problem. And even stretching your hamstrings, which is usually a common thing. Well, just start doing hamstrings and it'll feel

better. That actually is a common thing from doctors. Um, I've been doing a lot of marketing with doctors and that's a very, they give you this like stick figures, you know, sheet with a stick figure touching his toes. And you're like, wow, that's what you give people with back pain. Like that back pain coming from the thoracic spine. It could be coming from the hip joint. It could be coming from the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, um, any number of things, but the freaking low back. So the thing is you got to figure out where it's coming

from in the movement pattern and work on that unloaded that's the key and i think the the symmetry thing is something that is so often missed i mean people focus on the strength power conditioning all this piece what if we just spent a whole bunch of time wondering how we can balance our body out the most efficiently and you realize right side and left side dominance. Well, there's a huge problem there. I'm really strong on my right side. I have great balance on my left, but they don't match. What about the posterior and anterior chain? Clearly, when people sit all day, their posterior chain's turned off for 8, 10, 12 hours, whatever it is, and then they try and go and back squat. Or what happens when we're on single leg

or unilateral bilateral movements? Well, why are we only doing movements on one or on two legs facing forward? We need to be moving side to side, moving backwards, doing things that are actually balancing our body out and moving the way we move in nature versus the structured face forward, sit down, stand up. Everything is in this linear pattern. And most athletes, I guarantee you will know what size weaker or stronger for the most part. Um, just treated an Ashley athlete this weekend at a competition quickly, um, hurt her knee.

And she's like, well, I bias it's okay. Like I, she might've had a lateral meniscus tear, but she's like, well, I bias on her right side.

It's like, well, I bias my left side anyway. So it should be fine. Doing 185 pounds squat overhead should be fine I'm like well I'm just gonna tell you right now like that you're gonna want to fix that imbalance because you're basically doing one-legged squats people don't realize that bilateral deficit is more common it's very common and can lead to overtime injuries knee

hip not just low back. I find that most people have no idea that there's a deficit. So what are some ways to find that out? I mean, people have, depends on how mindful the person is, but yes. I think people kind of know, well, I feel tighter on my right or my left shoulder feels weaker. That might actually not be the case, but they're somewhat intuitive to like the tightness strength. What's a quick test we could do? So, or do you even

suggest that? For your low back, if you want to test something for your low back to know if you have too much mobility or too little, super simple, very researched, put your feet together, keep your knees relatively locked out, maybe slightly bent. All you're going to do is bend over and touch your toes. That's it. And so you can go ahead and do that. Do you bend your knees or not? You can look at someone from the side. Now, if they can palm the ground, unless you're a gymnast or ballerina, right, and you're training in these highly flexible positions, that's one thing. But most people aren't. So perfect mobility here or perfect flexibility is being able to touch your toes no more, no less.

And here's why. With straight knees. With straight knees. So what it shows me is that, okay, your spine. You keep on saying I cheat every time I do this. I'm not accepting it. You bend not accepting it you get to a little piece she's always like she's like you know you bend your knees gives you a good foreign you're gonna want to maybe do this in the next time you show up just wear pants they'll never

know i'm gonna start wearing loose pants so look in the mirror have someone take a picture that'll help build some awareness because that's so if someone can palm the ground right or elbow the ground which you know people often come in to see me and they're like i'm stretching i'm doing raw when i'm doing all this stuff um but my back still hurts and they bend over they flop over and you're like you have zero tension in your hamstrings your ass or your spine you have no integrity there. Stop stretching. You want to do integrity. Yeah. No integrity. We need to fix this. And then, so then I start, then I, then I teach them, okay, this is the perfect mobility position. Like you don't, even though a lot of these

individuals like to do yoga too, I don't ever want to take that away from them. When you incorporate the breath with anything, you're going to build more tension in your body. So I teach them how to breathe and I teach them how to create proper tension. That's what they need. They don't need to stretch more because stretching more means you're actually affecting your nervous system more in your brains. Your amygdala is going to be like, F you more pain. And then it's not going to get better. And you're going to go to your doctor and get, or chiropractor or PT and get adjusted. And it's not going to get better and you're going to go to your doctor and get or chiropractor or PT and get adjusted and it's not going to get better. Super common. It makes me very angry and I can talk about that for a while, but the other, yeah, it's your amygdala

mostly. Yeah. And then that's why, well, that's why, uh, so we've talked about painkillers, right? Painkillers are so great. It just covers up that feeling from the amygdala. Our country consumes the most painkillers out of everyone and we make up 5% of the population. So now, but the other component is this. So like the simple toe touch test, right? It's done in the SFMA, not in the FMS, but with posture restoration, we do this. So put your feet together. You can't touch your toes. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that tissues in your calf, plantar fascia, hamstring, glute, spine, somewhere there's restriction. Not just hamstrings.

It's not just a hamstring test. You can do things with your neck, and then all of a sudden it's easier to bend over. You can do things with your plantar fascia and get more mobility. That was one thing that when I first discovered that, it was shocking. You know, just take a lacrosse ball, roll it out, and all of a sudden I had a whole inch or two of new range of motion. If you think about it, we're on our feet all day long. Our plantar fascia is always working.

And so just releasing some of that tissue can help you get more range. But if you don't have that mobility, then that means there's more stress and pulling on the spine, too much tension. You need to improve that flexibility, even incorporate, you can improve the flexibility through proper breathing, but they, you need to be able to touch your toes, whether you're a child or an older adult, no more, no less. So that's quick test.

It's really like the secret sauce to this thing. Like they, you can stretch, you can lift, you can have the perfect plan. This super secret squirrel program that no one knows about. Hey, if you just breathe a little bit, calm the tissue down, joints open up, everything starts to flow a little bit better. Yeah. Since, since I started working with Teresa, I've focused, I would say between some stuff I've done with you and Brian McKenzie both, just around breath, been much more focused on the breath during training and during any type of movement. I've noticed that, oh, a joint is popping.

My focus has left my breath. I bring it back in. All of a sudden, that joint stops popping, and everything starts. It's like, oh, I can get in that groove even easier and everything starts moving yeah everything just all of a sudden it's easier it's also on the performance side like we talk a lot about their rehabilitation but how many people that are really strong right before they take a lift it's like big breath into their lungs they don't know where their abs are they don't know how to breathe into their belly to brace anything and they're clean jerking 350 pounds it's like do you realize how much power and performance you're leaving on

the table by just not understanding this one piece yeah um it's it's huge it's not even about pain it's also about just you know how much you could probably get another you know it might be leaving 10 percent yeah on the table yeah a second ago you mentioned the sfma so a few questions regarding that you can explain that what that is if you'd like but regarding that that uh great cooks kind of joint by joint concept can you can you explain how having like the proper balance of of adequate mobility and adequate stability plays into low back pain and then number two um touch on how you can have something wrong with your back, but it can also not be painful. Or your back can be painful, but diagnostically, nobody can really see anything wrong with your back.

Right. Okay. So the first one, so SFMA is the Selective Functional Movement Assessment. So it's his kind of clinical level of assessing an athlete joint by joint. And so that toe touch test is part of it. He's got a plethora of other tests that he uses too. And I like it as a general guideline. Uh, what it does is it points to kind of where the painful areas are and where the actual problem or cause of the problem is. So like someone has neck pain with flexion or extension, but their range is pretty good,

but let's say their shoulder flexion or extension is painful, then we, well, let's just, let me go back. So let's say they flex or extend their neck, and it's actually not good range, but there's no pain, and they flex and extend their shoulder, there's pain, but they have good range. Well, I'm going to start treating that neck first neck first right because the neck is directly related to the shoulder before I start treating that painful shoulder and we'll see if we can change that pain response with fixing the neck so the nice thing about the SMA is it gives us a direction that's your first question there Doug or did you want and why does it relate to back pain does it help it help with finding back pain? Yeah, I was directing it

towards back pain. So how it helps us find back pain is that it tests us on, I like doing one question at a time. Okay. For my pregnancy brain.

I was about to reference that, but I wasn't sure if it was appropriate. It's totally appropriate. I'm like, okay. I'm going to get hammered by women on social media. Hold on.

Now you, now you've given the, hold on. My brain is building 250,000 neurons a minute. Okay. Anyway. So how it targets to find low back pain, uh, it, it, it shows,

it tests, it allows us to test global movement patterns. So flexion, I'll just look at flexion. The spine needs to flex, helps us look at extension. The spine needs to extend. Doesn't need to extend when you've got 400 pounds on your back, but it needs to be able to extend. You need to be able to globally rotate. And that global rotation, we're looking at hips, low back, mid back, all that stuff. And we're looking at balance. So it allows

us to really find which pattern of the low back or spine is affected. So if you're flexion, if you don't, if you have limited flexion, but excessive extension, or let's say you have limited flexion, great rotation to the right, limited rotation to the left, but no pain. Well, that's a dysfunction. We call it a movement dysfunction. You may not have pain, but we want to fix that dysfunction before it becomes a problem. So it lets us get ahead of the curve. But let's say you have pain with rotation left, not rotation right, but you have limited flexion.

Well, okay, that's a problem, rotation left. I'm going to focus on that, but I'm going to treat the fact that you're missing flexion first, work on that, and then come back and retest rotation left. Does that make sense? So it allows us in as a clinician, and even I think trainers, professional coaches can take this course, to see which major movement patterns are missing and start to fix those because there's so many different tests for the low back, so many different ways you could go really generally. I mean, the general idea is stretch your hamstrings, right? From a doctor, they'll give you that or even a coach. And like,

that's not the answer all the time. Where is the missing? What's the problem? Can they not, where are they getting extension from? Is it from just their low back or are they actually being able to extend through their hips too and move forward their hips when they flex, when they hinge over and touch their toes? Are they just flopping down, you know, and hinging at their low back? Are they actually getting some hip shift back and rounding when they rotate? Is there a little bit more missing rotation left versus right? Well, if they have have a missing rotation you can guarantee any sagittal plane lift is going to be affected because if you're so for example if i miss rotation left and i have really good rotation right well my overhead press is going to be affected my left shoulder will be affected by the fact

that i can't rotate left enough my left left hip will be affected when I lift and squat. Yeah, we actually saw that with me. You can see it. We took a picture. You can see how the musculature in my back was more developed in certain areas and less developed in others. And we had the crisscross effect happening. And it was one of those things where I could feel the difference between my shoulders, but to be able to look at the picture and go, wow, that's actually a major difference. Yes. And how the muscle's been built over time. So yeah. I want to think about kind of this pain piece as like more of a communication technique that your brain uses to say, hey, that's not right. Instead of connecting with

this diagnosis and saying like, oh, I have this back pain. Well, what you really have is your brain's telling your body that movement wasn't good. So if we can find why that movement wasn't good, then we can start to break down the movement patterns, understand how we can re-engineer the way you're moving, create some default patterns so that you're able to move safely. Your brain recognizes safety, recognizes stability around the spine. A lot of that comes into the mobility, the stability piece, and then a lot of the multidirectional training. From a practical standpoint, if someone has low back pain and they've had it for years,

in your opinion, how does that person still get a really high-quality training effect? What do they do to work around that issue until it hopefully someday is actually fixed? Well, I think that the easiest thing to do, number one, the barbell is a phenomenal tool for getting people really strong, but it's such a good tool that we are able to kind of overload that piece of equipment and the body starts to compensate for all the movement inefficiencies. So if we can get into some dumbbells, get into some kettlebell training, and really focus on like, hey, we can do squats, maybe we can do a goblet squat. And trust me, if you load up a 100-pound kettlebell or 70-pound kettlebell and squat it 10 times really well, you're going to know that you're getting stronger.

We don't have to have the most weight on a barbell on our back the entire time. There's tons of single leg movements. I mean, single leg deadlifts, if we just were able to master that one specific thing, you'd probably be healthier the rest of your life. You might be surprised at how that translates into the bigger lifts. Exactly. And then there's anything getting you on one leg, anything. One of the things we see the most misunderstood is the actual like why why do we have these

abs it's not just the six of them but understanding like how do we um get some anti-rotation into our training how do we get some anti-extension really just building the actual functional piece of our abs so when we go overhead we're not overextending um that's one of the most common things i see people doing thrusters and then they're like. We have a great video on that. Makes you go faster. So it goes far. It's true. The but to answer Doug's second question because I actually do remember it. Common thing is so the so let's say someone isn't having pain but they they're moving poorly, or they're just, they're not having pain yet, but they have these gross asymmetries that we've found through the SFMA. So gross.

Or, yeah, gross, large asymmetries. I go into a gym, I see someone with an asymmetry, I'm like, not getting that. That is so gross. Yeah. Uh, so whether it's through the SFMA or we just look at them on one leg or we watch them move, um, we may be able to pick it out from some of the warmup movements or movements in the gym. Oftentimes it's harder. Like you kind of have to pull, get someone on one leg or take them through like an actual assessment. But the thing is, if I were to take an MRI of someone,

like 100 people our age, 60% of us would have a bulge test of some sort. But asymptomatic. Not me. Yeah. Asymptomatic. I'm perfect. That's actually one of the reasons I don't like seeing you is I realize how not perfect I am.

So, you know, degenerative joint disease or degenerative disease, anyone over the age of 60 is going to have signs of that. It's kind of, it's not even a disease. It's just a process of aging, unfortunately, but it can be slowed down right through spinal dissociation and movement and things like that because the proteoglycans in the joint are going to be more vast versus being sedentary. Should look of that word. Proteoglycans are like our best friends and joints. Anyway, connective tissue as well. What are these things called?

Proteoglycans. Proteoglycans. Proteoglycans. But the thing is, so just because, so we take this MRI and a doctor would say, oh, you have a bulge just in your spine. Well, I have no pain. Okay. Well, knowing that you have a bulge just in your spine. Well, I have no pain. Okay. Well, knowing that you have a bulge just in your spine, it shouldn't necessarily be a red flag, but you should know that somewhere in your movement pattern has caused that. So that's

why the SMA is so great is because you're missing, let's say I find you're missing rotation left versus right. We want to fix that. We want to be as symmetrical as possible. When you have gross asymmetry, it's like more than 10, 15 degrees difference one side, it's a problem. Internal rotation, external rotation of the shoulder. If there's a gross asymmetry, that's a problem. But people oftentimes are like, well, they don't care about their health until they lose it. And then, right, that- That's usually when I get upset. That's how we all found this. I'm just broken. I should fix this problem I've created for myself. Yeah. And that's a, that's a common thought process, but we have to get away from

that knowing that the majority of us probably have some kind of issue in our spine. Let's not focus on that disc issue or DD degenerative joint or whatever. So notice this, let's focus on what caused it. Where in our pelvis, our thoracic spine, our pelvic floor, is there a restriction or too much mobility, like not enough stability? Where is the problem in our movement pattern? Whether someone, that's kind of the thing

that I've been teaching mobility WOD for so long, like a lot of people would come up and they'd be so focused on their diagnosis. It's like, don't focus on that. Focus on your movement pattern fault. You can fix that and your imbalances, you're going to be okay. Right. Cause movement is life, movement is nutrition as Katie Bowen would say. And it's like, we, we need to focus on that proactive approach versus like, crap, I got a disc issue. I've got this diagnosis. I'm never like, I, I, I got to stop loading as much. I can't, I can't do said workout. Like, no, eventually you will just figure out the problem. The problem is. Yeah. All right. I want to shift

to maybe a little bit different subject. One of the things that I found really fascinating over the last few years and that always having short hamstrings and then causing back problems is kind of like, I mean, you know, I have my hamstrings are a little short and sometimes a muscle is shortened, not because it's short. There's, there's an asymmetry happening somewhere or there's a dysfunction that's causing tightness. And sometimes what I've come to realize which has been really refreshing for me because I'm somebody it's like oh I'm so tired of just stretching my hamstrings yes like this is getting old I've been doing it for like 20 years and and and then realizing that there might be a muscle that's not firing somewhere else

and that's uh that's causing the hamstrings to tighten up. And then now I have this back pain, but it's probably not because my hamstrings are tight. It's because another muscle is not firing properly. So what's common with, say, yeah, with muscles getting too tight and it's short, stretching might not be the answer. Yeah, stretching. Okay, so the reason why muscles will appear short, oftentimes clinically, as well as just upright torso movements, is because of pelvic position, right? If you were just, so for you, by fixing your position on the table and having you do some breath work to open up that posterior outlet, we call it the back part of your pelvis, breathing into the pelvic floor, we fixed that hamstring issue.

But oftentimes if you find yourself always lifting an extension, you press overhead, you're constantly overextending, sitting overextended, bending over, you're not hinging at the hips, right? You're constantly in this extended position. Your hamstrings are going to feel short. They're going to feel tight. Even the most flexible of people will say that because they live in this position. But... And they got this thing that's tight and they think stretching it,

making it tighter will make it feel not tight. But oftentimes that's going to be too aggravating on your nervous system. We're not just talking about muscles here. We're talking about the musculonervous system. So your brain is creating a tightness there because it wants the the hamstrings the glutes are there to protect your low back and if the low back doesn't feel protected based on the way your brain is perceiving it it's going to tighten up that area which is why

down regulation work such as breath work pelvic control, even the most basic rehabilitation drills, um, that I give people super basic to like turn on their transverse abdominus, external obliques, breathe into their pelvic floor diaphragm, like so basic can help actually release that tension. And that doesn't even require stretching. I very rarely there, you know, I might've given you stretches in the beginning, like mobility techniques, but that wasn't just require stretching. I very rarely, you know, I might've given you stretches in the beginning, like mobility techniques, but that wasn't just that alone. It was with breath work. Yeah. Another, does that make sense? One of the few injuries I've had over the years, um, that Dr. Teresa helped with, I seriously thought my bicep tendon was about to tear off

my shoulder and things were just the number of things that we don't realize that are neurological issues and I'm like get it home at night get the lacrosse ball out like we're getting to work I need to figure this thing out like make this problem go away wake up the next day bicep tendon still jacked up and she looks at me and she's like you just breathe a little bit and turn your head to the left and I was like no and she gets me breathing and you start realizing there's like some spine stuff going on in there and you're trapped blocking your head from turning and all of a sudden your shoulders and your ear and that breath work is not just the flexibility or tightness in your arm it's stemming from somewhere in your neck and that neurological component really just down regulates it allows everything to open up yeah um playing off of your

question and and uh similar to your response where this this might be true but maybe it's just a partial truth and this isn't the whole story but referencing great cook again uh regarding um you know a mobile joint not being not being able to get a mobile joint to become more mobile, even though you're stretching and stretching and stretching and stretching and stretching. So if you look at Greg Cook's joint by joint concept and the hips are a mobile joint and the low back is kind of more of like a stable joint, if you look at it collectively and then the thoracic spine is supposed to be a mobile joint. Again, if you have a lack of stability at what is supposed to be the stable joint,

like the low back, then your body will compensate and lay down stiffness at the joints above and below. So you lay down stiffness at the hips or stiffness at the thoracic spine. And so it's not necessarily that you need to stretch your hips to make your hips more mobile. You need to add stability to your core musculature and your torso and your low back. And then because you have stability there, now as a protective mechanism, you don't need to lay down stiffness at those joints above and below. Right. So there's going to,

so the compensation, it goes back to now, now we're not just looking at global compensation of biasing one side. We're looking at parts. So if your low back is not as stable, like you injured it, there's lack of stability there. That's supposed to be a stable joint,

stable bunch of joints, then your hips and thoracic spine will have to compensate um and so hips might start to get more mobile not necessarily more mobility but they'll have to create the stability there so they'll get stiffer your thoracic spine will get stiffer um so yes the you you can't just, mobility and stability go together. And so you start with the core of the core, which is your breath work, neutral spine. How can we help you maintain that? And the core of the core is your diaphragm and your pelvic floor. I'm not talking your rectus abdominis and the muscles you see on the outside.

These are the deeper ones that help maintain that pelvic position, minutes of breath work and firing up those deeper abdominal and low back muscles, such as the multifidi, not erectors, but like the multifidi that attach to each spinal segment. Once you start to get those turned on, which two things happen when you have pain, there's excessive muscle guarding, excessive guarding, or there's muscles that shut off. And usually with chronic issues, it's excessive muscle guarding. So in order to make them shut off, stretching is not going to do it. It's breath work, calming the nervous system down, which probably hasn't happened,

then working out to, okay, let's look at the specific mobility restrictions in those hips now versus looking at the global pattern. Let's look at the parts, hips, rotation, internal rotation, external rotation, extension, flexion. And then, which was something that you were missing, a little bit of hip flexion, which we worked on, but that was after training the core of the core. And then that thoracic spine rotation, what's going on there and seeing, are you rotating globally or are you rotating just to that teal junction right so um it's you kind of work center to out when you're treating any kind of spinal

issue excellent does that make sense yeah yeah okay that you said that like you're ready to shut it down i am all right let's do it. If anyone wants to find out any more information about you, either one of you, or how to work on their low back pain potentially, where should they go? We have a digital platform that we've created over the years. Dr. Teresa was running her practice out of our gym and my personal training clients. We were all seeing the same people and she'd be upstairs and I'd be downstairs. And it was like, we need to put this thing together. So we wrote one big program. We've got a great assessment that everybody can go through to individualize kind of how

the training goes, how the mobility and stability pieces go, how the breathing practices go. Put everything together into one online digital platform. You can go there, check it out at shrugged.thelowbackfix.com. Follow us on Instagram at the low back fix. I'm Anders Varner on all of the things. And Dr. Teresa Larson, so shrugged.thelowbackfix.com is our digital rehabilitation program. It's not a one size fits all. So if you've had chronic low back pain and you're running out of options and trying everything, you're going to want to check it out. Um,

if you are in SoCal or San Diego area and you want to come in and check out, need an evaluation with one of our stud PTs, um, it's movement dash arcs.com. Uh, which we obviously highly recommend since me and Mike both have been coming to these guys for years and it's been very, very good for us. So if you are in SoCal, definitely come check these guys out. Very good.

Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show, guys. Thank you. That was fun. You bet.